Venezuelan immigration to the USA quadrupled over the past 15 years

Venezuelan journalist Carlos Subero researched immigration patterns from Venezuela to the US since 1997 and found that it has surged from 2,500 to 10,000 per year. This reverses the trend of the 1950s, when Venezuela received immigrants from Spain, Italy and Portugal.

As you can see on the graph below, immigration jumped to the 10,000/yr mark on 2005, when Hugo Chávez announced the Salto Adelante, hacia la construcción del Socialismo del Siglo XXI (Leap Forward, towards building 21st Century Socialism) and began expropriating private lands and businesses:

Personal safety, economic reasons, and politics are the top reasons for immigrating to the USA. Subero also found,

Whole families are immigrating – the parents seek better lives for their children

Venezuelans are not interested in entering the USA illegally

40% of immigrants in 2009 were sponsored by next-of-kin who is an American citizen